“A Part of Who I Am”: Material Objects as “Plot Devices” in the Formation of Religious Selves

What role do material objects play in the formation of religious subjects? Drawing from an ethnographic investigation of the evolving relationships between a group of Eastern Orthodox converts and their religious icons, this article develops a theoretical approach to this question that conceptualizes material artifacts as “plot devices” in the formation of religious identity narratives. Integrating insights from studies of material religious culture with narrative theories of identity, this article argues that religious artifacts become significant to religious identity construction to the extent they act as resources for the configuration of a narrative structure in which transcendent or sacred others play a part. As the empirical details of this study demonstrate, attending to how religious objects’ symbolic meanings (i.e., who or what they represent) are mediated by their unique material characteristics (how they make meanings physically present to social actors in embodied social interaction) is of vital importance for explaining the significant role material artifacts play in the religious emplotment of action and experience.     

试论束皙之赋及其人品

束皙的赋作是六朝赋史中的特立独行者,选材的独特、语言的质朴使他在崇尚绮丽繁缛文风的西晋赋坛饱受争议。本文以为．正是柬皙赋中的这些迥异于时的因素使得他“代表了西晋文学非主流的一端”,对赋体表现空间的拓展及其功能的完善做出了贡献。     

贝叶斯推理研究的三个层次

从纵向发展来看, 近年来贝叶斯推理研究从重推理问题轻推理者因素(关注频率信息和图表呈现的促进效应, 推理问题内容对推理的影响, 生态效度等), 逐渐转向重视推理者因素(知识背景, 主体关联性程度等)和推理过程, 最后发展到将推理问题、推理者和推理过程整合的趋势; 从横向发展来看, 各个纵向发展的阶段内部也有横向发展阶段, 整个研究结构呈立体状。未来的研究应进一步结合推理材料、推理过程考察推理者因素如焦虑、认知风格、元认知和工作记忆等对贝叶斯推理的影响, 并利用新的研究手段如ERP、眼动仪等探索和验证贝叶斯推理的影响因素及其认知加工过程。     

Constructing the truth From ‘Confusion of tongues’ to ‘Constructions in analysis’1

The author hypothesizes that the papers Freud wrote in the period 1934‐9 constitute a fi nal turning point in his work resulting from an attempt to work through, by means of self‐analysis, early traumatic elements reactivated by the conditions of his life in the 1930s. The author emphasizes that the ups and downs of Freud's relationship with Sándor Ferenczi and the mourning which followed his death in 1933 played an important role in this traumatic situation. He suggests that through these last works, Freud pursued a posthumous dialogue with Ferenczi. This working through led Freud, in Moses and monotheism, to an ultimate revision of his theory of trauma, a revision which the author examines in full, in the light of the works of the Egyptologist, Jan Assmann. A new analytical paradigm emerges: that of constructions in analysis developed in the article of the same name. The activity of construction appears as an alternative to the mutual analysis proposed by Ferenczi and is closely bound up with the notion of historical truth. In psychoanalysis, it would mean constructing a historical truth whose anchoring in the material truth of the past is essential, though it should not be confused with it.     

怎样花钱更幸福?购买类型对幸福感的影响

以往研究认为满足基本生活需求后, 消费者购买与幸福感不显著相关。近期研究发现, 购买是否能够提升幸福感, 取决于如何购买, 例如购买体验产品比物质产品更有利于提升幸福感, 但存在边界条件。文章从个人层面的享乐适应、预期利益、非对称后悔视角及社会层面的社会利益视角对这一结论进行解释, 并从个人因素、情境因素及幸福感的类型三个层面识别了物质购买在提升幸福感上表现更优异的边界条件, 同时对该领域未来可能的创新研究方向进行展望。     

Collaborative scholarly communities and access in the study of material and visual cultures of religion

The Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion at Yale University (MAVCOR) does not simply, or even most fundamentally, shape a physical center at Yale University. Although MAVCOR organizes events at Yale and coordinates project cycles involving Yale affiliates as well as scholars from other universities in the United States and around the world, much of MAVCOR’s activity is conducted online. MAVCOR publishes a born-digital, open-access double-blind peer-reviewed journal, MAVCOR Journal. It also features a born-digital exhibition space, the Material Objects Archive. In at least two ways, MAVCOR is deliberately interstitial, invested in the connective spaces between both disciplines and technologies. First, the Center emerged from a desire to promote interdisciplinary conversation among scholars of religion, art history, anthropology, and others engaged with our subjects of inquiry. We have aimed to accomplish this goal by shaping a forum for conversation and an archive for mutual use. Second, MAVCOR engages the need to form a space for peer-reviewed content online in a manner that emphasizes the mutually beneficial relationship of print and digital modes of inquiry. In this work, MAVCOR’s overarching commitment is to promote innovative, substantively researched, thoughtfully constructed scholarship, with robust interdisciplinarity as a fundamental element of form and content.     

Introduction to the Special Issue “Phenomenological Studies in Multidimensional Views”

How should Scheler’s critique of Kant’s ethics be interpreted? This paper focuses on two aspects of Scheler’s critique of Kant’s ethics: 1) the problem of “formalism” in Kant’s ethics, and 2) the problem of the “ethics of autonomy” and “ethics of heteronomy.” Generally speaking, Scheler’s project has a “modern” starting point; that is to say, his work starts with the rejection or critique of Kant and Aristotle. Most essentially, Scheler’s “material ethics of values” (ethics of person) must stay autonomous. Following Kant, Scheler takes Aristotle’s theory as an “ethics of heteronomy,” and then competes with Kant within the “ethics of autonomy” and further develops his own “ethics of personal autonomy.”     

A multicriteria approach for material yard planning

The material yard is the origin of the production process for manufacturing firms. If materials are not stored at appropriate locations of the yard, then the stacking operation and the subsequent reclaiming operation will be inefficient in terms of time. In this paper a multicriteria approach which utilizes local trade-offs between different criteria in the absence of an explicit overall preference function is proposed to solve the material yard planning problem. The idea is to linearize the unknown preference function at a given point in the solution space. If the trade-offs between different criteria at this point can be determined via some mechanism, then a better solution can be derived. This process is continued until it converges to a stationary point, namely the optimal solution. To illustrate this idea, a case of the China Steel Co. in Taiwan is presented. The results from a simulation study indicate that the proposed approach is able to find a very good solution which satisfies all the criteria in a rather short transition period. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gana’Jôh: Haudenosaunee Pedagogies of the Drum Letters From the Woodshop

This article presents reflections on a drum-making workshop organized for young Haudenosaunee men on Six Nations of the Grand River territory in a region now known as Ontario, Canada. Imbued with an inductive character, we reflect on the disconnections between Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and draw on transdisciplinary methodological approaches to praxis. The main body of the article is constructed through a series of letters where each author reflects on the tensions and contradictions between Indigenous ways of knowing and the modes of knowledge creation promoted through academic White settler ideals. Drawing on Indigenous epistemologies from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson we argue that material production in relation to the making of Haudenosaunee drums can become pedagogy and fuel Indigenous-specific resurgence and intelligence. After we introduce ourselves and sketch the context for our project, the narrative proceeds through two voices in conversation. Each co-author reflects on the insights that emerged from an effort to decolonize learning through the pedagogies of the drum.     

Pornography use and sexual aggression: the impact of frequency and type of pornography use on recidivism among sexual offenders

In this study, we examined the unique contribution of pornography consumption to the longitudinal prediction of criminal recidivism in a sample of 341 child molesters. We specifically tested the hypothesis, based on predictions informed by the confluence model of sexual aggression that pornography will be a risk factor for recidivism only for those individuals classified as relatively high risk for re-offending. Pornography use (frequency and type) was assessed through self-report and recidivism was measured using data from a national database from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Indices of recidivism, which were assessed up to 15 years after release, included an overall criminal recidivism index, as well as subcategories focusing on violent (including sexual) recidivism and sexual recidivism alone. Results for both frequency and type of pornography use were generally consistent with our predictions. Most importantly, after controlling for general and specific risk factors for sexual aggression, pornography added significantly to the prediction of recidivism. Statistical interactions indicated that frequency of pornography use was primarily a risk factor for higher-risk offenders, when compared with lower-risk offenders, and that content of pornography (i.e., pornography containing deviant content) was a risk factor for all groups. The importance of conceptualizing particular risk factors (e.g., pornography), within the context of other individual characteristics is discussed.